Progguitarist wrote:
You know, it's a real shame because I think Miyamoto is an incredible designer (obviously).

It's almost unbelievable that they didn't foresee poor sales without quality software.

An incredible game designer with far too much influence over the console design, which is 99% of what's gone wrong with their last two consoles, not that the gamecube was better off by being pretty much the same as the ps2 and xbox, but at least it allowed for ports and some decent third party support.

Progguitarist wrote:
You know, it's a real shame because I think Miyamoto is an incredible designer (obviously).

It's almost unbelievable that they didn't foresee poor sales without quality software.

An incredible game designer with far too much influence over the console design, which is 99% of what's gone wrong with their last two consoles, not that the gamecube was better off by being pretty much the same as the ps2 and xbox, but at least it allowed for ports and some decent third party support.

Have to agree with you there. He's not the only designer they should be aiming to please. Really think a change is needed at Nintendo.

For all the complaints people have about the Wii U. Its underpowered, sluggish OS, Account tied to the console and even lack of 3rd party support could of been forgotten about (from my perspective)if they just had a ream of quality games from Launch.

I like my wii u, I don't think its a bad little console and I do like the OS and miiverse and the overall experience. I also have plenty of other systems to play games on but even im starting to get a bit pissed off with what seems to me like a "dont give a damn" attitude.

I wont get rid of the wii u as there really isn't any point from a financial point of view. At the very least i'll have a small batch of games to play on it.

E3 has to be amazing but from what ive seen so far I have extremely low expectations. They have to reveal more than a 3D Mario and Mariokart for me. If they show those along with a Zelda, Metroid, F-Zero, retros new game, another couple of new ip's and maybe some other franchises with a new lick of paint and these had confirmed release dates which all happened to be released from September - December I would be content with that.

I just cant see it. I want to be blown away and surprised by what they reveal at e3 but just cant see it.

Apologies for the rant. Ive had a few beers and had to crack open the codeine due to some bloody kidney pain.

Baihu1983 wrote:The first, People didn't know if it was a new console or an add on controller

This comes up a lot but I really don't think it has much to do with it. Wii sold loads to casuals that were never going to buy another Nintendo console. It skewed the sales figures and made the Wii look like a bigger success than it was. In reality, a massive chunk of the sales went to fly-by-night casuals who bought in to a fad then ditched it when they got bored (six months later). In pandering to these people, Nintendo alienated the gamers that actually continually spend money on videogame services, who continually buy games, DLC's, online subscriptions, etc. So now Nintendo want to win those guys back, and they attempt this by releasing an underpowered overpriced outdated console with a controller that has fewer uses than an actual tablet, with games that are no better than they can get on the console that's been sitting under their telly for the past six years. All this with the ever looming presence of another console from the Microsoft/Sony brands they've become loyal to.

So how much of an impact do you think the big Nintendo IP's will have on sales? Although by the time any of them arrive it'll probably be far too late. I'm not sure that Wind Waker re-release is going to cut it. Is there a new Mario/Zelda/Metroid/Smash Bros on the horizon?

Is Nintendos problem is that its too focused on japanese business practices, its there home country i know but theres many japanese companies who have had to change for the western world.

I couldnt agree more that miyamoto and co have too much influence in business decisions and doesnt iwata stem from R and D himself?

Nintendo if they wanted to, could put the entire industry to the sword, outsing EA, Ubi, activision, anyone really but they dont. Obviously they dont have the resources its shared between the handheld and console but if they sifted through their entire catalogue and started releasing heaven forbid annual releases, who knows what could happen.

The 3DS doesn't actually get a lot of western support either, unless it comes in the form of indie developers on the eShop. As a result, Nintendo themselves are publishing Japanese games to help fill the void. The games are still limited in number on the Wii U, but if Nintendo take up the same strategy with the Wii U, i'll happily welcome it. It'll help develop a unique library of games, which will make it more appealing to gamers who want something different on the side.

I can't see Nintendo losing much from the lack of EA's support. They've not done much for the Wii, DS or 3DS and they're not really missed on those consoles either.

There's also today's announcement that Sega is handing publishing duties of Sonic the Hedgehog over to Nintendo, like Sonic the Hedgehog still means something to the games player. It doesn't, it's a tired old mascot who jumped the shark when Sega painted him black and gave him a gun.

Maybe it's true of certain 'communities', but almost everyone I know who plays video games is a fan of Sonic.

...I sometimes wonder if games journalists get out of the house much...

Pikmin isn’t a system seller and neither are the fans favourites like Star Fox, Metroid Prime, F-Zero, Wave Race and Paper Mario. Nintendo certainly need a new Wii Sports or Wii Fit type game to grab the casual gamer’s attention; or at least a hook for the Gamepad something to sell the system other than “Off TV mode.”

This is the year of Luigi so why wasn’t there a Luigi’s Mansion U? The Gamepad would have been a perfect scanner; although the Wii-Mote and Nunchuk were made for shining a torch in a dark room.

Looking at video games sales across the board this generation; apart from the bundled Kinect game Kinect Adventures 24 million, the bestselling Xbox 360 game is COD Black Ops with 12 million, that’s a ratio of 1 out of every 6 Xbox 360 owners bought the game. Halo 3 with 8 million has a 1 in 9 ratio and Gears of War 5 million 1 in 15 ratio.

Based on the install base of the Wii U in comparison to the Xbox 360; ZombiU is out performing Halo 3 and Sonic All-Star Racing is doing better than Gears of War. If the Wii U had an install base similar to the Wii then NSMBU would have sold 55 million. I’m losing the plot and if Mike Ashley can look down and see his penis without looking in a mirror then Newcastle will beat Arsenal 4-1 on Sunday.

Wii Sports and Wii Fit were a fad and their time has gone. How many people still use Wii Fit? They're not going to buy a new console for it. Wii Sports whole point was to use the Wii controller. How are they going to use the new one with it? It's going to need the old controller, so again, why bother when you already have it?

Nintendo 'lead the way' with the Wii with it's new controller. Now it seems to be trying to copy what is already out there. Very poorly.

Rec wrote:
Iwata doesn't seem to know what he's doing to be honest. They had all this success with the Wii and failed to invest in new teams a across the world like Sony and to a certain extend, MS did.

That's an important part yeah. They invested in almost nothing. They got some French company for video codecs and that's about it. Like an investor asked them in Japan (loosely paraphrased): "Google just bought Motorola for 1.2 Billion dollars (I think it was), why don't you when you have a cash reserve of over 10 billion?". And then you just get nothing. They don't evolve, they don't adapt, they don't grow so they'll just die. The Wii and DS were the perfect chance to have an almost Apple sized userbase, but they just threw it out the window because of inept leadership that's only interested in traditionalism.

Rec wrote:
Iwata doesn't seem to know what he's doing to be honest. They had all this success with the Wii and failed to invest in new teams a across the world like Sony and to a certain extend, MS did.

That's an important part yeah. They invested in almost nothing. They got some French company for video codecs and that's about it. Like an investor asked them in Japan (loosely paraphrased): "Google just bought Motorola for 1.2 Billion dollars (I think it was), why don't you when you have a cash reserve of over 10 billion?". And then you just get nothing. They don't evolve, they don't adapt, they don't grow so they'll just die. The Wii and DS were the perfect chance to have an almost Apple sized userbase, but they just threw it out the window because of inept leadership that's only interested in traditionalism.

This is not true. While they haven't been doing much outside of Japan, during the Wii and DS era they bought and absorbed Monolithsoft into a first party, which obviously turned up roses when Xenoblade became a hit, and the developer behind Super Mario Galaxy 1, 2, 3D Land and that DS/3DS doodling software was a brand new team set up in Tokyo (they are based in Kyoto). They also brought back Masahiro Sakurai into the fold by helping him set up Sora, so he could Smash Bros. Brawl and Kid Icarus. They also expanded Katsuya Eguchi's division (Nintendo Land, Animal Crossing) and Intelligent Systems (who was having trouble making 3D games) so they could make more games at a time.

Before the Wii U hit the market, they had already had a second Tokyo team up and running and now they are in the midst of moving into a brand new building they've been constructing for about a year now because of all the new developers and staff they've hired won't fit until the old one. Its unknown how many new development teams will come out of it once they move in, or if they've already in some capacity.

Other than that, they worked with Monster Games and Next Level for Excitetruck, Excitebots, Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D, Punch Out and Luigi's Mansion 2, but don't seem to want to buy either, at least not yet.

It is part of the reason Nintendo hasn't been as profitable lately, because they are expanding. Should they have done more? I think we will know a little better once they move into their new building and see how the pace of releases changes.

So, while I'm waiting for the post to be delivered, I will pointlessly waffle on a fair bit about Nintendo and the whole Wii U 'situation'. I guess this is the sum total of all of my thinking about Wii U and Nintendo.

From my, admittedly very ill informed perspective, it would appear that Nintendo is a very fiscally conservative company and is mired in traditional Japanese business practices (for both the good and bad of that). Let's not forget that they are Japanese, they are not westerners and probably do no see the world in the same way as western people/companies. Is that something that can really work in today's multinational environment? Is the mission of Nintendo to make money for their shareholders, or is to make the best entertainment products that they can, for the widest audience, thus enabling them to make money for their shareholders.

Is it that they only consider the Japanese market to be important and the rest of the world is merely a distraction? For example, look at the paucity of products that are available on the UK Nintendo points store, it just doesn't compare to what's available in Japan. Maybe we just don't matter that much? Maybe it's really all about Japan for them? I don't know what the Japanese press and public think of Nintendo, so it's hard to say. I will love to be able to walk into a Nintendo store in the UK and buy all kinds of Nintendo related crap.

While it's a fairly large company and has a few billion in cash reserves it would appear that its ability to adapt and restructure itself is a major problem. While large companies can make huge profits, they can also hemorrhage money at an unprecedented rate. Look at Blackberry, as an example, whose future does not look good. Success is fleeting and structural problems and a lack of R&D are hard to fix.

Perhaps, like others have said, the lack of long term investment in R&D and making links out to the larger game development is now starting to tell. The financially successful Wii years possibly allowed them to rest on their laurels and paper over the cracks that have been their for many years. In the last 7 years it looks like everything they did made money, such was the flash in the pan success in the pan that the Wii was. You really cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again, year after year. Things change, the world does move and on and those who wish to prosper must also, however reluctantly, do the same.

As much as Mario et al. are staples of Nintendo, businesses do need to develop new products and services and satisfy existing users and try to attract new users. On one hand they develop some pretty unique and interesting hardware and then follow up this innovation by pumping out the same games over and over again. They may be great games but they are essentially the same games (although you could say the same for most of the industry in the last 25+ years). Nintendo have certainly lost the power of surprise - to the point that most of us can probably predict fairly accurately the games / franchises that they will release over the next couple of years. Personally, I have to say I actually punched the air when I saw that they were releasing a new Mario Golf game. So, Nintendo can still make me really happy, sometimes.

The Wii U is certainly technically underpowered compared to the upcoming Sony and Microsoft consoles and it's too late to do anything about that now. There isn't even any point in arguing about it - it is what it is and cannot change. It would appear that battle of tech supremacy has been lost even before it has started. A lot of people like the console (myself included) and are very happy with it, but that is not enough to ensure the long term prosperity of your business. Core fans will pretty much enjoy what you put out, whether that be Mario Land 893 or the billionth version of Call of Duty. People like what like - the problem is that the amount of people liking what Nintendo do may be decreasing. That's not a problem this year or next year, but some day soon it will be.

Nintendo probably now need to focus on being that second console under people's tv's. For that, it needs to be cheap enough and it needs to have a reasonable amount of good quality games available. However, to have good quality games available, you need to have a development structure in place, which is something that takes time and you can't solve it just by throwing money at it. Like, right now at work, I'm working on what is essentially a 'dead' project. They keep throwing money at it and hiring in all sorts of consultants and specialists in a vain attempt to 'fix' it, but they can't because there are fatal organisational structural and management problems, which cannot be corrected in the short term.

And Nintendo are miles behind in terms of online services and products. When I think of Nintendo and online, the word 'clunky' comes to mind. For me, as a 'semi-retired' gamer and one who doesn't rank gaming in my top 3 hobbies, I really don't care at all about this. Nintendo will no doubt come good and release a few quality games throughout the Wii U's lifetime. As a dual owner of the 3DS and Wii U, my gaming needs are already more than satisfied, such is my low consumption rate of games. I hardly notice or care whether it's been 3 or 9 months since Nintendo last released a game. However, forget me. I'm not a typical gamer anymore. I'm a dinosaur, irrelevant now. I will always spend my money on Nintendo stuff and, will for the most part, like it.

They need to concentrate on the more active gamers, the teens and 20 somethings who spend a lot of their time involved in gaming. And to grab them, they have to realise that to that audience (as far as I can tell, being almost 40 years old now), tech matters, online, sharing and interconnectivy matters massively. Nintendo do all of these things horribly and probably need to invest hundreds of millions, if not billions to catch up.

Ok, I'm done. Basically, Nintendo, you have a lot of fans who love what you do and who will buy most of the good quality stuff that you put out. We probably don't care too much about tech or graphics, because we grew up in the days of yonder where things were much less sophisticated. If you somehow, unthinkably, one day disappear, it will feel like a death in the family and many of us would likely quit gaming altogether. We, your fans, are all getting older and to be honest, while may have plenty of money to throw your way, we just don't have the time or as much energy and enthusiasm as we used to.

We want to pass our love of joyful gaming onto the next generation, to show them that it doesn't have to be all tech and physics, dismemberment, gore and shooting people in the face. Please accept that the world has changed and you need to as well, however much it may pain you to do so. Miyamoto is a legend but there comes a time when even the most talented need to step back to allow the next generation to prosper. The 80s and early 90s were a glorious time of deeply joyful gaming and I want you to keep that spirit alive and bring it forth the next generation.

Please change, so that joy can remain in gaming for many years to come.

@zoolophage still reading my way through, i think people need to remember that nintendo aren't like sony or microsoft - nintendo rely on literally their games to survive, sony and microsoft are much bigger companies that can absorb failing branches, restructure etc, they are massive corporations , whilst big, nintendo are no where in that league.

Yeah, I'm well aware that Nintendo is not actually that big a company in the scheme of things. It's not so much how much money they have in the bank that matters right now, it's their ability to continue to make money and to continue and grow and expand. They can afford one or two missteps, but more than they could potentially put their entire business at risk, such is the great cost of running a fairly large organisation.

zoolophage wrote:Miyamoto is a legend but there comes a time when even the most talented need to step back to allow the next generation to prosper.

Miyamoto oversees a lot of projects, and its a little unclear how much input he has in each one, but his two babies, Mario and Zelda, have been successfully transitioned into new directors, Koizumi, for 3D Mario, Tezuka for 2D Mario (who himself trained a new team to make New Super Mario Bros. 2) and Aonuma for Zelda. Neither Mario Kart nor Pikmin is even directed by him any more. His training of these new teams was essentially complete during the Gamecube generation. Only two of Nintendo's five breakthrough hits during the DS/Wii generation were Miyamoto darlings (Wii Fit and Nintendogs). Brain Training, Animal Crossing's rise from niche to worldbeater franchise and Wii Sports were all primarily orchestrated by other people. They've also got another legendary designer (Sakamoto) there who is releasing hits at a decent clip (Wario Ware, Rhythm Heaven, Tomodachi Collection) but for some reason, whose name is not as well-known.

From the man's own words in recent interviews, it seems like he might be working on some downloadable games recently, instead of package releases.